Trayvon, Killed for Wearing a Hoodie: The US Takes to the Streets for the Latest Black Martyr

Trayvon Martin was 17, a packet of candy in his pocket and a can of iced tea in his hand, wearing a hoodie, which so many kids of his age wear, including the billionaire founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. The difference is that Trayvon was black and therefore irreparably “suspicious” in the eyes of George Zimmerman, 28, the Caucasian security guard and former student of criminology who was a volunteer in the armored paradise of Sanford’s houses, a few minutes from Orlando and Disney World’s plastic dreams.

The neighbors heard him cry desperately for help. But when they arrived the poor Trayvon was already lying in a pool of blood in the street, the bullet in his head shot at point-blank range by Zimmerman, who now pleads self-defense against that unarmed kid — who was also assaulted, it looks like, with some racist epithets.

Self-defense means that the Caucasian avenger may not even be tried, thanks to a law introduced right in Florida seven years ago by a certain Jeb Bush, the latest star of George’s dynasty, which lets anyone who has a “reasonable doubt” of being in danger shoot first. You don’t need to be a law expert to find that law “abominable,” like the New York Times says now in an editorial.

You don’t need to be black to stand by the oldest association for civil rights in America, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which now protests that it was a racist homicide. Nor do you have to be famous and committed like Spike Lee, Mia Farrow, Michael Moore and the dozens and dozens of celebrities who screamed their indignation from blog to blog; it takes a click on the site change.org, which in a few days collected over than half a million signatures to support the request of Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon’s parents: “Try our son’s killer.”

Yes, the America that elected its first black president discovers, on the skin of a kid, that race still makes a difference for the worse. But that same America is not keeping quiet. In New York thousands of people are marching with the parents to demand justice; everyone — in an echo of the Occupy Wall Street movement — wears the “rapper hoodie” that, in the eyes of the security guard, made that boy who was coming back from a candy shop “suspicious.” In Miami, schoolchildren abandoned their classes to protest and, under CNN’s cameras, staged a 70s-like sit in. Dozens and dozens of buses from all states are heading to Florida for another protest. And almost a month after the boy’s death, the Department of Justice finally decides to open an inquiry while — after a vote of no confidence by the city council — the head of Sanford’s police suspends himself temporarily.

The fact is that the inquiry won’t stop the horrors of that law that, meanwhile, has been copied by 15 other states — and that in seven years has already tripled, in Florida alone, the number of self-defense homicide in cases of doubt. The victims, in the overwhelming majority, are black.

And yet, recorded phone calls to 911 — the emergency number in the U.S. — would leave very few doubts about this story. Zimmerman has been a volunteer for 12 months; since then, he launched 46 alarms to the police for just about anything: from drunk drivers to the usual suspects. It must not have looked like real, the night of Feb. 26, to see “a very suspicious guy.” He called 911.

“This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something,” he said about that guy who was actually coming back from a candy shop to go visit his girlfriend, who was waiting for him at his father’s place. “These assholes,” Zimmerman said in the recorded phone call, “always get away.” The police told him to stay calm; they reassured him that they would send a patrol and told him to stay where he was, while the security guard let them know that he wanted to take a closer look. The men of 911 said: “We don’t need you to do that.”

Only then, the neighbors heard a fight, called the police and said that there was a guy crying for help. But there was no time anymore. Trayvon had already crumpled onto the ground with all his weapons: iced tea and candy.